Better Judicial Review? EU Courts and the Smart Regulation Agenda in Implementing Chemicals Regulation

AbstractThis article argues that implementation of EU law should be analysed and studied as part of EU BR policies. In particular this is so after adoption of the Commission's smart regulation initiative, which makes a conscious effort to include the whole policy-making chain as its concept of better regulation. In this article I will shift attention away from the preparatory stages to the later stages of policy-making and analyse implementation projects of Chemicals Regulation REACH as a new manifestation of EU smart BR policies. Acknowledgement of the implementation stage in BR studies will offer some important insights into the relationship between BR and the courts. The courts are marginal actors mainly due to the soft law nature of much of the BR agenda. However, EU BR policies and their outcomes can become helpful for the courts by providing them with increasingly accurate information. I will then proceed to show how REACH implementation projects, especially guidance documents, can be utilised by th...